


On the Efficacy of Fire Flowers

by Miss_Prince



Category: Rune Factory (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:18:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Prince/pseuds/Miss_Prince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marian's experimenting gets a little more out of hand than usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Efficacy of Fire Flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Etanseline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etanseline/gifts).



> In the end I had to conclude that this was gen, since the shippiness is only really there if you squint, but for the record, I wrote this with shippy intentions. That has to count for something, right?

The Incident, as it came to be called by those citizens of Sharance with a modicum of tact (the rest preferred something along the lines of "that time Marian nearly blew up the town") occurred on a sunny day near the end of summer. Collette remembered that day well. With the lunch rush at the restaurant completed, she had time for a bit of a break, and so she wandered out into the heat of the afternoon sun, sparing an idle thought to be glad that the sweltering days would soon be ending, but devoting rather more of her mental energy to considering what to have for dinner. The restaurant's rice stores were woefully depleted, and Collette imagined that after serving their dinner customers there would only be enough left for maybe seven servings – eight at most; not nearly enough for a satisfying meal. She made a mental note to stop by the general store on the way back.

But for the moment, her footsteps were leading her down the familiar path to the apothecary, where she hoped to find her oldest and dearest friend. Collette smiled and gained a bit of a spring in her step as she thought of Marian. Marian, who had insisted on patching up every paper cut and scraped knee Collette had ever had. Marian, who had dragged her out to the Sol Terrano Star Dunes in the middle of the night when they were seven and made her pinkie-promise that they'd be together forever. Marian, who was currently standing at her cauldron, stirring an ominously bubbling _something_ , with an equally ominous gleam in her eye.

Collette turned on her heel in the hopes of making a stealthy retreat, but alas, it was too late.

"Collette!" called Marian cheerfully, bounding over and seizing her hands, preventing her escape. "You're just in time! How's my favorite guinea pig today?"

Collette was far past taking any offense at this. She chose to consider it a very odd term of endearment, and given the… _unusual_ way Marian's mind worked, she might even have been right. She allowed herself to be dragged over to the cauldron, where she discovered that the "ominous" nature of the bubbling was due to the fact that whatever concoction Marian was brewing up had the consistency of thick sludge, which belched forth big ugly bubbles that burst with sickeningly wet plopping sounds. Its deep, thoroughly unappetizing black-brown color completed the impression that Marian had decided to boil up a swamp.

"Isn't it great?" Marian continued, oblivious to Collette's private musings and the facial expression that was making them somewhat less private. "I'm really close to a breakthrough this time! I can feel it!" Releasing Collette's hands, Marian stepped forward to rummage through a crate that perched precariously on the lip of the cauldron.

Sparing one contemplative glance at the door, Collette sighed and resigned herself to her participation in Marian's latest scheme. She turned her attention instead to the fistfuls of packets Marian had pulled from the crate. "Fire Flower seeds?"

"My secret weapon!" Marian crowed, turning and brandishing the seed packets with such a flourish that she nearly tipped the entire crate into the cauldron. "Whoops. Anyway, somebody way out in Selphia discovered that Fire Flowers have some serious healing powers that up until recently were going almost completely untapped! Just think, we were only using the things to treat colds every now and then, but they're capable of so much more!"

Collette eyed the packets dubiously as Marian gave the potion a few laborious stirs. "But… these are just seeds, not the actual flowers," she pointed out.

Marian waved a hand dismissively, not deigning to take her eyes off the potion. "Who has time to grow flowers when there's experimenting to do? Progress waits for no one!" Stirring evidently finished, she retrieved her spoon with some difficulty. "Besides, if the flowers have healing powers then it stands to reason that the seeds must too, right? This way should work just fine, and as a bonus, it's much faster!" Marian grinned.

Collette's misgivings were only growing. She took in a breath, a cautionary argument about plants with edible leaves and poisonous flowers or seeds coalescing in her mind.

"And just as soon as I've added them in, you can test my surefire Cure-All potion for me!"

All thoughts ground to a halt as Collette stared at the disgusting concoction with a horror that was quickly mounting toward hysteria. "Oh no, I couldn't, actually I think I can hear Dad calling me back to work, must have gotten a mid-afternoon rush-"

"Oh, don't be silly!" Marian wrapped an arm around Collette's waist, once again impeding any escape attempt she might make. "Doesn't it look delicious?"

Collette could make absolutely no response to that. She looked at the potion in dumbfounded silence.

"That deep, rich brown, just like thick, melted chocolate…" Marian continued.

The part of Collette that was aware of just how very, very many times she had fallen for one of Marian's tricks kindly informed her that this was an exceedingly obvious trap. But its voice was a small one compared to that of her highly enthusiastic (and, naturally, dumb as a rock) stomach. She tilted her head, beginning to see the potion in a new light. Yes, maybe there _was_ something… chocolaty… about it…

Marian was also looking at the potion, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Actually, maybe adding some chocolate would be a good idea. It's good for magical binding, and it'll probably improve the taste." She frowned. "I used the last of our chocolate supply yesterday on those experimental brownies that were supposed to make people fly, though." She considered and, apparently coming to a decision, grasped Collette's hands once more. "Collette, my very, very good friend," she said with a bright smile that was more than a little unnerving, "would you do me a teensy, weensy little favor and pick up a few bars of chocolate from Hazel and Karina's store? It'll only take a minute, and it would help me out a ton."

The quiet voice of reason in Collette's head had been gaining ground ever since Marian's tacit admission that the potion currently had no chocolate in it and was thus very unlikely to taste anything like chocolate. It prodded her that this might be an opportunity for escape. "Well, I guess…"

"Great!" And with that, Marian shoved a pouch of gold into her hand and began to guide her toward the door. "You're such a good friend! And being a good friend, I know you'll come back straight away with my sorely needed ingredients and the change, won't you?" She smiled again. "Hurry back!"

And so Collette found herself on the street once more, this time with a pouch full of money that might as well have been a ball and chain for all the weight of obligation she carried with it. She sighed, glancing mournfully in the direction of the restaurant. It appeared there would be no escape today. Best to be off to the general store and get this whole mess over with as quickly as possible.

She was barely ten paces down the road when it happened.

The sound was deafening, a crack that rent the air and wounded Collette's poor ears. A violent force shoved her forward, and between that and her poor-footed attempt to spin around and discover the source of the ear-splitting sound, she wound up sprawled nearly flat on her back in the street, only the most basic of instincts allowing her to flinch out of the path of a thick board that was suddenly flying directly at her face.

It took a few moments for her brain to reorient itself and her panic to subside enough to actually figure out what had happened. When her eyes finally settled on the source of the occurrence, her blood ran cold.

The apothecary was… gone.

Well, not gone, exactly. The front façade was lying in jagged pieces in the street, most of the east wall was embedded in the side of the De Sainte-Coquille mansion, and the roof… actually, the roof _was_ gone. But Collette couldn't spare a single thought for where it had managed to end up. She pulled herself up, half-running, half-stumbling toward the ruined building in her haste.

"Marian!" she cried out, eyes searching the rubble for any sign of her friend. A hint of blue in the slowly clearing dust pulled Collette toward the west wall, the only one left even partially intact. Sure enough, there was Marian, slumped against the base of the wall, eyes shut and body alarmingly still.

"Marian!" Collette cried again as she picked her way over the ruins of the apothecary. The knot of fear in her stomach unclenched slightly when Marian's eyelids twitched at the sound of her name, and slowly her eyes slid open.

"Heh heh… oops?" she mumbled, just as Collette reached her and kneeled down beside her.

"Marian! Are you okay?" Collette chewed her lip as she took in the damage. The fact that Marian was conscious was becoming a smaller comfort the more she took in the singe marks and bruises that covered her. She gave the impression of a poorly-toasted marshmallow, which, Collette reflected, was probably a terrible thing to think about your critically wounded best friend, and it was probably even worse if it made you realize you were still a bit hungry.

"Maybe I shouldn't have added the whole crate's worth of seeds at once," Marian reflected, for once, but any further progress in the art of self-reflection was forestalled by a sudden violent coughing fit. "Ooh… that hurts…" she said, the words accompanied by a miserable grimace.

"Don't worry," Collette said, hoping she sounded reassuring. It then occurred to her that she should probably pair the statement with a reassuring face rather than the half-panicked look she was dimly aware she was sporting. She awkwardly attempted a smile, which she suspected made the whole expression worse, overall, but thankfully it didn't matter, as Marian's eyes were closed again. "I'll… I'll get you something to help!" That seemed like a good idea! She made doubly sure that Marian was still breathing before leaving her side to pick through the rubble for some sort of useful medicine.

It quickly became apparent that medicine was going to be a lot harder to procure given the apothecary had been blown to smithereens. Bottles were smashed everywhere, a rainbow of potentially life-saving potions rendered useless puddles on the floor. But she couldn't give up, not with Marian counting on her! She crossed to the far side of the former building, still looking. A glimpse of something liquid and shining gave her hope, but as she moved closer she realized it was Marian's cauldron, half upended and dripping the majority of its contents on the floor. Given that concoction had probably caused this whole mess, Collette was inclined to guess it would be a bad decision to feed it to Marian.

But wait… She peered closer. Where the liquid had once been an ugly sludge-brown, it was now a still not terribly appetizing but much more aesthetically pleasing blue color. Curious, and not terribly conscious of the potential safety hazard, Collette dipped a finger into it – slightly warm, and with the consistency of syrup rather than the particularly sloppy mud it had been before.

It was the only thing she had. It _seemed_ alright… Collette stuck a pair of fingers into the cauldron and scooped up a portion, and then, with no small trepidation, licked them clean. She had an iron stomach, after all, so she was in a better state to test the stuff for ill effects than poor, injured Marian. It tasted bland (maybe the chocolate _would_ have been a good idea) but not bad. Collette paused, considering carefully. She didn't have the urge to throw up. Her stomach wasn't exploding – not yet, at any rate. There was a bit of a pleasant warmth in her belly that was spreading slowly out from her core. She chose to take that as a good sign, and she scooped a dose of the stuff into the least-broken jar in reach, hoping the concoction wasn't actually a deceptive and slow-acting poison.

Marian frowned at her when she returned, eyes barely open and quickly losing focus, but her mouth opened obediently when Collette placed the jar to her lips, and she drank the syrupy stuff down.

Nothing happened for a long moment. Collette still wasn't feeling any ill effects, so she didn't think it was doing harm to Marian, but was it helping? She couldn't tell.

She chewed her lip again, more worried than she'd ever been in her life. Finally, she couldn't stand it any more. "Marian? Are you alright?"

Silence was her only response.

Fear began to take hold more strongly. "Marian?" she called desperately.

Marian's eyes fluttered open. She raised an eyebrow at Collette, who realized that their faces were rather close and scooted back, blushing.

"Are you…?"

"I'm not alright at all," Marian said.

"Huh?" Collette replied, alarmed. She fussed over Marian, inspecting the damage once more. Funny – maybe it was a trick of the light, but the bruises and burns didn't seem quite as bad now. "Does your stomach hurt?" Collette still felt fine, but Marian _had_ taken a larger dose, and Collette had a greater tolerance than most people for anything ingested.

Marian ignored her. "All that wasted work!" she sighed, staring off into the distance. "I really thought I was on the track to my Cure-All this time, but it was all another dead end! This is going to set me back months!"

Slowly it dawned on Collette that Marian wasn't complaining about physical ailments any more. As she looked into Marian's face, twisted only by frustration and not by pain, she felt sharp, blissful relief.

Then anger.

"You idiot!" she said, smacking Marian's shoulder. "I thought you were really hurt! I thought you might be…" Collette trailed off, uninclined to finish the thought. She could feel tears pricking at her eyes.

Marian at least looked apologetic, which was extra gratifying for the rarity of it. "Geez, Collette, don't cry…" She reached out and pulled Collette into a hug, which Collette allowed, sniffling into Marian's damaged dress. It smelled like sulfur. Collette decided she didn't really care. "I think I was hurt pretty bad. You gave me something; medicine, right? I think… I think I really needed it." She swallowed, suddenly realizing just how close a call she'd had. "That was quick thinking. How did you manage to find a healing potion in this mess?"

"It wasn't a healing potion," Collette mumbled against her chest. She finally pulled back. "I got it out of the cauldron over there." She indicated the far side of the apothecary with a turn of her head. "It was the only thing I could find that wasn't seeping into the floor already. I mean, a lot of it was…" she trailed off as she realized Marian was staring at her with unnerving intensity. "I-It was the only thing I could find!" she repeated, this time defensively. "I had to try it! And I tested it myself first, so I knew it wouldn't hurt you! Well, I figured it wouldn't hurt you…" she amended, conviction draining from her voice.

"It was my potion?" Marian asked. Her voice was quiet, but the sound of it made goosebumps stand up on Collette's skin.

"Well, it seemed really different than the last time I saw it, but, well, I think so?"

" _My_ potion," Marian breathed, "healed me?"

"Er…" Collette saw the gleam growing in Marian's eyes. She wasn't sure whether to be excited or nervous. "Yes?"

With a whoop, Marian jumped to her feet. Collette figured that was inadvisable given her condition, but her protests fell on deaf ears. "Success!" Marian cried. "I've done it! I've really done it! My panacea is nearly complete!" She yanked Collette to her feet with surprising strength and spun her around in a weird little circular jig. "And all it took was a teensy little explosion! Who would have thought the catalyst could be so simple?"

Collette tried to find the words to respond to that, but luckily she didn't have to.

"Marian!" came a sharp, elderly voice from the direction of the street. "What did you _do_?"


End file.
